Tracker-free site — 20 Oct 2019

In a recent post, Garrett Dimon talks about how he quit using analytics on his personal site, and how he hasn’t missed it or even need it.

I feel quite the same, and Garrett’s words resonated with me. I have been encouraging my clients and partners to either give up on Google analytics all together, or use alternative solutions such as Fathom, or Matomo (formely Piwik). Moreover, both offer community of self hosting editions.

While one can make a case that analytics are essential to certain kinds of businesses, large international reaching sites, ad-based web sites, competitive e-commerce solutions and so on, but for a large number of websites, Garrett argues that it isn’t the case, and I largely agree with him.

It’s worth noting that it is always interesting from a technical point of view to know what your visitors are using in terms of browsers and viewport sizes, especially when undertaking a revamp and implementing more of the new browser features.

If you’re searching for business insights, talking to real people beats raw data any day. It’s not as convenient, but when is anything worth doing convenient?

You can’t beat talking face to face to the people who use your website.

Helen Joy gave an inspiring talk “Whose Design is it Anyway?” at New Adventures Conference 2019 on digital exclusion and inclusive design. Adopting a practical user research-led attitude to design by taking the time to visit and talk to the users of one’s services, can massively improve their experience, and in certain occasions, change their lives.

I have been using a self hosted version of Matomo on this website since its redesign to monitor how things were going, but chances are that I’ll just remove the tracking code before the end of the year.